Thanks for stopping by! It is Results Day. Did you create characters this month too?

I am thrilled to share new designs that landed in my email box from Evan (age 6). Check them out!

Evan has been creating characters with me since February! I love how action-packed his activity sheet is! AND he experimented with color too this month. Great job Evan! Thank you for creating characters with me! Let’s zoom in on the bonus characters he added at the top of the page…

They are my favorite!

If you’d like to be included in next month’s post, send your designs to me by June 26th: amy[at]amynielander.com. Include your name, age and character names. I’d love to see what you create!

On to inspiration….

Shapes #133 came from a quick trip to “America’s Largest Home”: Biltmore Estate.

This was my second visit to Biltmore. I was excited to see it again now with my kids! This French Renaissance chateau is so grand on the exterior, my visual appetite was filled before we even went inside. It spans 175,000 square feet and has 250 rooms, including 43 bathrooms! Would you like to live in a house with that many rooms?

Before we went inside the house, we visited the gardens and Conservatory.

A botanical model train runs through the plants and lush gardens inside!

I found most of my shapes outside. Take a look…

The ceiling reminded me of a Meadow Brook Hall detail!

Next up was character creating! First, I did some pencil sketches…

The ideas for my characters came to life in these loose sketches. As I was brainstorming, each shape wanted to connect in some way to the other. It felt like I had a super rough story on my hands. I developed my characters with pen sketches. Here is a time-lapse.

Did you spot a story forming? Something was taking shape. But, with a new picture book on the way, I didn’t have time to flesh it out (for now!). The best way for me to capture this particular story was by using a literature tool: the limerick! If you are new to limericks, they are poems that follow a 5 sentence rhyming structure. The last word in lines 1, 2 and 5 rhyme while the last words in line 3 and 4 rhyme. The pattern looks like this: AABBA. Limericks are all about having fun with nonsense! There is no pressure to build a flawless story. Phew! The main goal is to laugh, chuckle or maybe even say, “How absurd!”. You can find examples here.

I merged my limerick with a comic-style delivery and out came a….POMIC (poem + comic)!

See the full transformation below…